The importance of a reference

Please remember to add a reference of your OC when you are commissioning me.

I don't even care if you think it's 'badly drawn', any ref is better than no ref at all.
My job is to draw your OC, not make fun of someone's art skills
(That's rude, no one should be doing that).

Commission orders with no references of any kind will be declined.

I apologize if I sound rude or mean from this, but this is for my own mental health, to be honest.

From my own experience, I really dislike getting commission orders with no references of the OC
and instead really long or vague descriptions of how they look, simply because they almost always seem to go the same exact
route each and every time.

No reference leads to a lot of 'guessing' and potentially a lot of back and forth messages.
I won't lie, I am TERRIBLE with 'design descriptions', often misunderstanding things and getting everything wrong
and out of place.

Most of the time this leads to much of my 'guessing' about the OC's design being completely wrong and leading me to
scrap what I've done so far and redraw everything from the start over and over again until the commissioner is satisfied.

Forgive me if I sound mean or hateful for this, but I don't have the time or patience for that.

I have no problem with going back and making quick changes to a few mistakes on markings or anatomy,
but if I have to go back and redraw an entire OC with huge wings, lots of fur, scales everywhere, complicated markings or anatomy or whatever, this often immediately leads into anxiety attacks and a massive and often painful doubting of my own skills and even depression periods that seem to last forever.

This is terrible because it also puts a huge stop in production and causes other
commissioners to have to wait even longer for their requested piece.

I understand completely that this is, in fact, my own problem and not your own.
And that it is something that I am responsible for fixing on my own.

But still, including a ref, even a scribbly one with some scribbly coloring,
just makes everything 1000 times easier for me and helps makes things not as.....scary.